‘Gothic Modernisms’ forms the culminating event in a trilogy of conferences investigating the modern and modernist reception of Northern medieval and Renaissance masters in Europe, beginning with ‘Primitive Renaissances’ (National Gallery, London: 2014) and continuing with ‘Visions of the North’ (Compton Verney Museum, UK: 2016). This conference will take place at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

The ‘Gothic’ has permeated visual and cultural ideas and practices of modernity. Yet the presence of a ‘Gothic Modernity’ or Gothic Modernisms challenges fundamental perceptions of how ‘modernism’ from the late nineteenth-century onwards has been historicized, created, produced and seen.

Gothic Modernisms will focus on the (global) legacies, histories and contested identities of Northern European Gothic/early-modern visual cultures in modernity and, in particular, on identities of modernism, including avant-gardes.

The conference aims to develop both a broad perspective in relation to gothic modernisms and a deepening of the issues—methodological, theoretical, aesthetic, archival—pertinent to this subject. In particular, the conference seeks papers which pose fresh questions about the modern reception and practices of medieval art in institutions and museums, as well as in art, art historiographies, art writings and broader visual-cultural contexts.